New Diplomacy Patch 

New Rebellion full version will be up sometime tomorrow

And the winner for best timing of a mod update release goes to, envelope please, my hands are shaking, SOA2 Team Rebellion!  

Best timing because my only plans for Monday: SOA2 Sins & hot dogs fresh off the grill.  

Thank you for your kindness.

backs out of the work week slowly...  

Wahoo!

Thanks for the explanation.  I have the npc's figured out, except for the HoD.  I've set the ferengi/tamarian/sona so they are delayed but the HoD never seem to spawn and i'm not sure why.  All i changed were the following values:

HoD
Re-attack Delay:

BuffHoDSpawn1 D=4800       HVCanon=6400
BuffHoDSpawn2 D=6000       HVCanon=12000
BuffHoDSpawn3 D=12000     HVCanon=25000

Regular Attack Frequency:

AbilityHoDSpawn1 D=1200   HVCanon=3000
AbilityHoDSpawn2 D=1500   HVCanon=6000
AbilityHoDSpawn3 D=3000   HVCanon=9000

Pirate Attack Frequency: Not Applicable

Initial Attack Delay:

BuffHoDLock1Set D=1100   HVCanon=4000
BuffHoDLock2Set D=1800   HVCanon=8000
BuffHoDLock3Set D=5400   HVCanon=13000

D=xxx is the default setting of SoA2, HVCanon=xxxxxxx are the new settings that i put in.

any idea why this might cause the HoD to never spawn?

Heya. Just skimming through your audio and making comments as I go.

I can identify most of the music off-hand without names. Good choices. Some of the DuesEx:HR tracks sound a little different than the game rip I have - are these OST variants or remixes of somekind? I would have personally transcoded everything to 320CBR when possible but I understand you have size concerns... which may invalidate my main point here.

I have some soundtrack suggestions based on the tracks you use in this. Remember to acquire game rips and not OST's, OST's never have anywhere near the amount of tracks an actual dump will yield. Though some OST's have different recordings entirely from the game. These are all very common soundtracks so you won't find anything super niche here.

Lair (PS3)

The various God of War games (Ps2-Ps3)

Viking: Battle for Asgard (Ps3-PC)

Aion (PC)

Anyways, I checked your sounds and noticed the Borg responses are a big mess of static and pops so I cleaned those up for the most part. Some of the static is still there but I rebuilt trails and deleted a ton of silence so it's much less noticeable, and only a few of the pops made it through my filters.

Nuked some static from a bunch of various sounds. This might warp the sound a bit. Up to you if it sounds better.

A few sounds I applied some filters to in an effort to raise fidelity, since they sounded very flat/low quality. This is really subtle and I didn't pursue this goal across more than 2-3 sounds.

Some sounds have little sharp bits of static at the front or end. I removed these when I found them.

http://www.gameproc.com/meskstuff/BlackSun/SoARemaster.7z

Anyways, the only thing I really want in return if you use any of these is permission to use Weapon_Romulan_PlasmaTorpedo_Muzzle for source for some SFX in Retribution. I think I could make some really silly things with this.

Some of the other responses I might clean up since I noticed they also have static, in the future.

My local library is full of OST's and they are sometimes a pain in the ass to remix, but getting soundtracks out of games I don't own is another story all together. I would really like to add to the klingons with a viking theme though, thanks for the recommendations.

As 1 member of the team, I have no problem with you using some of our sounds, but I don't think we have the authority to grant permissions of assets we took from old trek games.

sacrifice-of-angels-2.weebly.com/copyright-and-distribution.html

I will load up a game later and insert your new versions to check them out,
Thanks a bunch 

mephistopheles

Darkshimmer probably put that particular sound file in, I don't expect it would be his but he'd be the guy to ask about it if you're worried.  It's probably from SFC, Klingon Academy, or Bridge Commander.

Technically I don't have permission to use a lot of things including all of the music I am using. But one thing I won't do is take something from a modder who doesn't want it to be used.

As for getting soundtracks out of games, some are easy to rip on your own, but there's some sites with a lot of rippers on them you can get them from as well.

any idea why this might cause the HoD to never spawn?

It shouldn't.  Are you sure they aren't spawning?  You've got over an over before the first one spawns, then it's nearly an hour before it spawns again.  The final stage doesn't kick in for almost 4 hours.  You could play a ten hour game and you've only spawned about a dozen of them over the entire duration.

If they really aren't spawning, you've borked something else.  I tested them out and all three stages spawned as expected.

Great work as always!

I'm having a couple of problems and was hoping to get some guidance.  I blew away my old SOA2 folder and replaced it with the new one..and I noticed the Sacrifice of Angels.exe and just ran that ...and everything booted up fine.  In fact, I was expecting the usual crash the first time you run the game with the mod enabled, but it didn't happen!

The only issues I'm seeing are the models now look all washed out; I am playing Federation and the ships look pearl white!  They look "normal" (grey) when they're in warp.

Also, the Romulan AIs now know how to use their cloaking devices!  Great!  However, my Nova ship's decloaking ability didn't seem to work on the lone H'Veik warbird pestering one of my starbases..

Any advice?  Also, thanks again for all your hard work; the mod is great!

-Scott

It's shadows, turn them off and you're back to normal.

If you were actually using the Nova to try and decloak a warbird, that wouldn't work.  It has no decloak ability, that's on the Akira.

Edit: We buggered the release, no decloak abilities function against the AI at present, a patch will go up soon to fix this.

I really did not like their shadow system, it added constant light to the whole model and removed from shadowed areas, but it is greatly improved in the bEta patch, which, BTW, our mod is compatible with, so far. If you do opt in for the public bEta on Steam, we do not guarantee something will not break when Steam updates the bEta. You may have to roll back to 1.52 until we get a fix which means it will no longer be compatible.

Shimmer did pull some of the old sound tracks. The early builds i tried to use as much of the TMP soundtrack as possible, or as much of Jerry Goldsmith as possible. even if it wasn't trek. I wanted to use some of the ghost in the darkness music for the klingons.

What i didnt want was the relentless repeated fanfare of the opening themes. Fist0 and crew did a pretty good job adding new stuff.

Turn off "mesh highlight filter" in video options.

New Rebellion patch is awaiting modDB authorization.

This patch fixes cloak countermeasures and Enforced Loyalty, along with a few minor visual enhancements.

I will host it in the SOA2 dropbox until authorized.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/62930032/SOA20.6.4R.7z

 Authorized

http://www.moddb.com/mods/sacrifice-of-angels-2/downloads/soa2-rebellion-patch

I turned off shadows, and that fixed the washed out display problem!  Thanks for the tip.  I also tried turning off the mesh highlight filter that Iskatumesk suggested, but it had no effect I could see, either with the shadows on or off.

As far as the decloaking goes; I was indeed using a Nova class ship; the Akira only appears to have Tractor Beam, Ablative Armor, Antimatter Spread and Tricobalt Devices; is there something wrong with the mod on my machine?  The only ship I could find with a decloaker was the Nova...

I tried dropping in the patch you guys did (wow! quick turnaround!) and I didn't see any difference; the H'Veik is still just hanging around cloaked.  I'd have to start over to see any difference, correct?

Thanks for the help!

Eh... I'm going senile I guess.  It used to be on the Akira though, so I've not entirely lost my marbles here...

You will have to start over for the fix to apply.

I am really enjoying the mod, great work.

I have noticed a couple of issues which look like bugs:

First, warp inhibitors for each faction do not increase the time it takes for ships to warp out (as implied they should be by the name and research/build description). There is no status description on enemy ships (even when they fly right by the enemy inhibitors or attempt to leave the well from within weapons range of an inhibitor), the time it takes to warp out at the edge of the gravity well is the same as when not inhibited, and there is no ability listed for the warp inhibitors to slow enemy ships. I tested this for each faction in Dev.exe using a Federation Miranda, but I've seen it in various games with other factions.

Second, the Borg Cube ability to deploy a Borg Sphere has some problems: The ability requires no fleet supply, so the Borg can deploy them indefinitely (although it does not seem to autocast immediately after cooldown with negative supply). Also, the ability deploys TWO spheres on each activation. I know Borg are supposed to be overpowered, but getting two of the most powerful non-elite ships in the game for the price of one, with no fleet supply cost, is a little too overpowered.

The buildings are placeholders, they're not supposed to slow warp charging.

The sphere was indeed supposed to be one only.  The ability cost resources and has a 5 minute cooldown though, not exactly a free or convenient way to mass forces.

Weird. I'm not quite sure what it is you are talking about since I myself have not run the mod, but I would think any issues with the shadows are due to the normal maps not being sins-compliant. These look like standard normal maps which are very much unlike the sins defaults. However, I don't really have the time to test my theory and verify if changing them actually has any effect or if I encounter any issue myself to begin with. All I know is, I don't have any issues with the shadows in my project except for the shadow map resolution issue that causes flickering on a lot of details (that they supposedly alleviated in the new patch). Maybe they've already tried to change them without any results and I am just lucky.

http://i.imgur.com/YpRZVua.jpg

Have just played a few minutes with the new Rebellion update. Some nice touches in there. The planet and ship alterations look great. 

I totally screwed up this update for Rebellion 

Until the new patch is authorized you can get it here ...

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/62930032/SOA20.6.5R.7z

mephistopheles 

new rebellion patch available now

 http://www.moddb.com/mods/sacrifice-of-angels-2/downloads/soa2-rebellion-patch

This will always be the culmulative patch page link, we will just update the file and summary so I don't have to change links on all our pages.

The Miranda is blossoming into the flower we knew she would become.  

They grow up so fast.

backs out of the room slowly...  

Hi there. Great work with the latest update enjoying it immensely!

I have been wondering about the moons around gas giants as I have not come accross this feature in the main game. Is this part of your modding?

Also is it possible to change the orbit speed of moons? It's somewhat jarring to see them wiz round the horizon at near warp speed.

And is it possibe to change their orbit distance? Currently they are awfuly close to their host planets.